Letters on England eBook

Voltaire’s OEdipe was played with success
in November, 1718. A few months later he was
again banished from Paris, and finished the Henriade
in his retirement, as well as another play, Artemise,
that was acted in February, 1720. Other plays
followed. In December, 1721, Voltaire visited
Lord Bolingbroke, who was then an exile from England,
at the Chateau of La Source. There was now constant
literary activity. From July to October, 1722,
Voltaire visited Holland with Madame de Rupelmonde.
After a serious attack of small-pox in November, 1723,
Voltaire was active as a poet about the Court.
He was then in receipt of a pension of two thousand
livres from the king, and had inherited more than
twice as much by the death of his father in January,
1722. But in December, 1725, a quarrel, fastened
upon him by the Chevalier de Rohan, who had him waylaid
and beaten, caused him to send a challenge. For
this he was arrested and lodged once more, in April,
1726, in the Bastille. There he was detained
a month; and his first act when he was released was
to ask for a passport to England.

Voltaire left France, reached London in August, 1726,
went as guest to the house of a rich merchant at Wandsworth,
and remained three years in this country, from the
age of thirty-two to the age of thirty-five.
He was here when George I. died, and George II. became
king. He published here his Henriade.
He wrote here his “History of Charles XII.”
He read “Gulliver’s Travels” as
a new book, and might have been present at the first
night of The Beggar’s Opera. He
was here whet Sir Isaac Newton died.

In 1731 he published at Rouen the Lettres sur les
Anglais, which appeared in England in 1733 in
the volume from which they are here reprinted.

H.M.

LETTERS ON ENGLAND

LETTER I.—­ON THE QUAKERS

I was of opinion that the doctrine and history of
so extraordinary a people were worthy the attention
of the curious. To acquaint myself with them
I made a visit to one of the most eminent Quakers in
England, who, after having traded thirty years, had
the wisdom to prescribe limits to his fortune and
to his desires, and was settled in a little solitude
not far from London. Being come into it, I perceived
a small but regularly built house, vastly neat, but
without the least pomp of furniture. The Quaker
who owned it was a hale, ruddy-complexioned old man,
who had never been afflicted with sickness because
he had always been insensible to passions, and a perfect
stranger to intemperance. I never in my life
saw a more noble or a more engaging aspect than his.
He was dressed like those of his persuasion, in a
plain coat without pleats in the sides, or buttons
on the pockets and sleeves; and had on a beaver, the
brims of which were horizontal like those of our clergy.